Email overload menace growing

Are you drowning in data?

Feel overwhelmed by your inbox? It's not just your imagination - the number of emails you're receiving is trending upwards.

According to a recent poll of silicon.com readers, 33 per cent receive between 51 and 100 emails per day - a rise of 10 percentage points compared to a similar poll we conducted two years ago.

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The largest number of respondents now receive 51 to 100 emails, compared to two years ago, when the largest percentage of readers said they received just 26 to 50 emails per day.

While the portion of readers who receive more than 100 daily emails has remained flat at about 30 per cent, fewer people are enjoying light email loads. The number of respondents seeing less than 50 new emails each morning has dropped by 11 percentage points over the last two years.

The one bit of good news for the data deluged is that the volume of power emailers - those who receive more than 500 emails - has dropped to two per cent this year, down from four per cent in 2005.